


Until The End

by hunters_retreat



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Life After People Have Left, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, The Earth Survives, Will We?, World Storms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 16:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16768666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hunters_retreat/pseuds/hunters_retreat
Summary: Jared liked being on the Earth, scorched as it was.  He didn’t care if he carried dirt in his every fiber.  He didn’t care that his hair took three cleaning cycles when he got back to the station just to be truly free of it again.  He didn’t care that his skin tanned darker each time he was on assignment and his once pale skin never seemed to return to the shade he had been born with, or that his sun-darkened skin was decades out of fashion.





	Until The End

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the J2_reversebang on AO3. This story was inspired by the amazing art by knowmefirst.

It was absolutely breathtaking.

Jared made a point of knowing the most beautiful places left on the planet and he was glad he’d been given the chance to see this one.

The soil under his feet was cracked and barren but up ahead was a canyon with a green riverbed. It was covered from the sun by high walls and it was the first green Jared had seen on the planet since he’d made the point to visit the oases of the Sahara. 

He reached back into his bag and pulled out his monitoring equipment to see if there was anything of note in the small scrap of paradise.

He hated lugging it out, but his arm-tech went haywire when used on the storm-ridden planet and after being sent back to base once to get it fixed he was determined to stay on Earth as long as possible. 

It took a few minutes before the scan was complete and Jared frowned when he saw one other person in the area. A speeder was tucked into the underbrush somewhere to the east and that could only mean one thing.

Another surveyor.

Jared didn’t have a problem with other surveyors, but they seemed to have trouble with him. 

On the station, no one got to choose what they were doing with their life. Life had been planned long ago for each of them; every birth approved and methodically documented, each new life allotted a position before aptitude and attitude could even form.

Occasionally, someone died unexpectedly and positions opened that were not usually available. Jared was one of the lucky few who loved his job whole heartedly. He was the only surveyor he knew that did. Most did their time on the fire-scoured planet and were happy to return to the space station and review their findings.

Jared would rather stay on the planet and let someone else review.

In fact, Jared had made it known to so many people that he had a steady stream of other surveyor who paid him on the side to stay planetside and send up data for them so they didn’t have to do it themselves. 

No one cared, so long as the job was done. And no one cared that Jared had another guy doing his review work so that he could stay either.

He just hoped whoever was in this little patch of heaven wasn’t an asshole.

***

It took the better part of two hours to find a way down into the canyon on his speeder from the west end. The east seemed to have much easier slopes, but the greenery was thinner and Jared was happy enough to take the time to find his way down.

Besides, there was something about the look of the greenery just ahead of him, a violent splash of color against the bare dirt most of the Earth had become. He could almost imagine what a green earth had been like.

Sure, he’d seen pictures of the Earth, Pre-Storm. Green lands and clouds, gray and heavy with water. The pictures were truly beautiful, but there was something breathtaking about seeing it in person.

Nothing in those old photos could explain the feel of grass under his feet and the smell of growing things. The air on the stations was so processed that even the greenhouses had a metallic scent to them. 

Jared liked being on the Earth, scorched as it was. He didn’t care if he carried dirt in his every fiber. He didn’t care that his hair took three cleaning cycles when he got back to the station just to be truly free of it again.

He didn’t care that his skin tanned darker each time he was on assignment and his once pale skin never seemed to return to the shade he had been born with, or that his sun-darkened skin was decades out of fashion.

He didn’t care that the denim he favored on Earth was too coarse for the sensitive skins of the Station-Sired. That the flannels were too warm for the environment and his leather boots were a material seen with little favor since animals were far too valuable to be used for fashion. Only the planet-bound surveyors were dressed in such and he was one of the few who did so even on the station.

Mid-day had come and it was time for Jared to make his camp. The hottest part of the day would come all too soon and he wasn’t stupid enough to try to work through it. He’d read everything the station had about the early explorers and he’d even had data transferred from the other stations that orbited the planet. The old explorers who had gone back when they first tried to survey the planet had used a lot of trial and error to survive the harsh environment. Jared got his best tips from them; tips most modern surveyors had forgotten.

With the help of his earlier scans, Jared found a cave where he could keep the speeder out of the elements. It was made to take the sun and heat and the grime, but he wanted the chance to walk the area for a few days and it would be too much work to have to clean all the dust and debris from the speeder if he left it out in the open for that long without use.

The quiet of the green of the world surprised him, but he knew it shouldn’t. All the old stories spoke of the calls of birds and the play of small animals in the underbrush. Only the sound of the wind broke the silence now. 

He moved down to the base of the small canyon and found the cause of all this green. Water bubbled from a spring somewhere in this canyon and a stream had developed. It wasn’t much. He knew from the scan that it was larger further north. He stopped and filled his canteen. It filtered the water, but the test told him the water was clean on its own and he was able to drink from the stream without the processed taste the chemicals added. Plus, it extended the life of his equipment and the less time he spent on the station replacing it the better.

He took a long drink from the fresh water and washed himself down quickly in the stream. It wasn’t cold water, by any means, but it felt nice against his skin and Jared was refreshed as he turned to follow the riverbed north. 

At the hottest part of the day, Jared pulled the fabric from his pack. It was useful for fashioning a tent, as well as a making a hammock. Jared preferred to sleep in a hammock with the heat of the day so he quickly strung it up between two trees. 

There was no danger here of animals, no fear of mean-spirited men and women looking to take a little extra to make up for what their lives lacked. The only dangers Jared faced on the planet were the environment and he had long mastered those. 

He thought of the other surveyor in the canyon and wondered if he knew him. It had been two years since Jared last saw a human, face to face. It might be nice to have a conversation.

***

Two days in the canyon and Jared was utterly charmed by it. He documented it properly, with photos and system scans and samples of greenery sent back in digital form to be reviewed on the station. Water readings were taken and sent back as well. 

It would be generations before the planet was habitable again, but they checked and rechecked the progress of the world storms to reconfigure their needs.

Jared wondered if the people on the station had any idea what life would be like if they were able to come back. He knew, as they were all taught, that once they reached the right conditions, they would have to begin reeducation. The hydro-farmers would need to be replaced by people who knew how to grow food in proper soil. They would introduce animals back into the world and by the time humans were ready, they would need farmers to grow food and care for livestock. Construction work would begin on small communities and nearly every aspect of their lives would change. 

Jared wouldn’t live long enough to see that though. No matter what they were taught, he doubted any one would. The stations had already shown too much damage, too much sign of wear and tear. He wasn’t an engineer, but he was grateful for the day he had been sent to the scorched Earth and he was able to live his life away from the mechanical death that seem to fill the air on the station.

It was getting close to mid-day so Jared decided it was time to set up base for the day. He’d done enough scanning so if he found a good location, he could still call it a decent day’s work. If there was nothing close to the water, he could take his time to find something upstream. 

Besides, he was a walking mud cake today. All the days of dusty travel had accumulated and now that he was in the canyon, every brush of greenery made him feel the mud crust on his skin. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been near water deep enough to wade in and this stream seemed to be deepening further ahead.

He traveled along the water’s edge and found a good camp not thirty minutes later. The canyon walls and the young trees hid him from the sun’s rays and he would almost say it was cool, if he didn’t remember the perpetual cold of the space station.

Jared preferred the sun though. He set his camp up and tied up his hammock for after he washed his clothes and cleaned up in the river.

It didn’t take long to get everything the way he liked it. When he finally had it all set, he walked down to the river and stripped off his boots. He undressed quickly and found a good place to step into the water. The water was cool against his skin, but nothing on the planet was truly cold. He grabbed his clothes and scrubbed them clean before he decided to start on his own skin. He threw his things on a rock on the riverbank to let them dry. 

With that done, he leaned back into the water and let himself fall under the surface. He held his breath as long as he could and enjoyed the feel of the water’s smooth current running over his skin. When he could no longer hold his breath, he surfaced. He leaned back and scrubbed at his hair and took his time before he began to scrub at the rest of his body to try to get as clean as possible. 

He missed the clean of the station occasionally, but there was nothing like this in space and Jared would give up the artificial clean for the water any time. 

He’d been in long enough for his fingers to get all wrinkly but Jared had plenty of time to relax before he needed to get out of the water. He heard a cough and jerked his head up. 

To his surprise, there was a man standing on the riverbank.

“Uh … “ His mind was blank. It’d been a long time since he’d actually seen someone else.

“Hey, I’m Jensen. I was surveying a little north of here and caught you on my scanner. It’s not often I’m close enough to touch base with anyone else.”

“I’m Jared.”

There was an awkward silence and Jared just stared at the other man, unsure of what to do. Of course, he was stuck naked in the stream at that moment. 

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I’ve camped in this area before. I was going to get cleaned up myself.”

“Feel free. There’s plenty of water. At least until the next storm.”

Jensen smiled. “How about I fix something to eat? After we eat, I can get cleaned up. If you don’t mind sharing a camp?”

Jared couldn’t help but smile back. Most people back on the station thought he was awkward and he had a hard time talking to them. Jensen didn’t seem to mind, but then surveyors were the only ones who spent time on the planet. And being the only people on the planet, they were the only ones who spent any time alone. 

Even among surveyors though, Jared was an oddity. He spent more time alone than any of the others.

“It would be nice to have another face around,” Jared answered. 

“I’ll leave you to it then,” Jensen said as he walked back towards the camp Jared had made. Jared could see where Jensen set his bag down and began to set up a camp oven. Luckily, most of the equipment they had from the station had been honed from years of need to be light weight, efficient, and durable. He rarely needed repairs and most he knew how to do by himself. All the surveyors did. He was surprised he didn’t know Jensen. There were plenty of people he didn’t know on the other stations, but surveyors tended to stick to each other when they weren’t on the planet. With Jensen’s easy smile, Jared would have remembered him.

Not that he had time for things like that. Friendships or anything else. He wasn’t ready to stay station-side, and even surveyors weren’t usually paired together planet-side. That he and Jensen were both in the same area currently was an oddity. There was probably some anomaly in the data, or something that needed to be clarified. 

Jensen would probably have to move on soon and Jared thought it might be nice to talk to someone while he could. Even if it was just over dinner and before they headed to their beds. 

He finished cleaning up and found the dry clothes he’d left out. He dressed quickly and the heat of the day dried what water remained on his skin. When he finished, he went back to his camp. He hung his still damp clothes on a tree branch and took a seat on the scattered clumps of grass. 

Jensen passed a plate of food to him and Jared took it gratefully. Even more so when he realized it wasn’t the regular MREs he carried around. “What is this? Where did you get it?”

Jensen smiled. “There are stashes all over the planet if you know where to look,” he admitted. 

Jared knew that was true. Once upon a time, people had thought they could burrow their way into the earth to survive the world storm. He also knew that the supplies they’d buried in their tunnels had been meant to last a very long time, including structures that were meant to be able to support plant and animal life until the world was habitable again.

When they realized just how bad the world storm was going to get, they abandoned those ideas and turned to the skies. Living under the ground had never appealed to the masses and they had been happy to abandon the planet to live in the stars.

“And you know where to look?” Jared asked. 

“I’ve found a few. I sent samples of everything up and they came out clear.”

“The only caches I’ve heard of have come back contaminated.”

“Yeah, that’s what they say.” Jensen’s back was straight as he said it, his eyes on Jared’s, as if judging his reaction.

“They don’t want anyone to know about the supplies down here? Why?” Jared asked. Because he didn’t doubt Jensen. He’d seen … odd … things before. Like the data he’d collected about the stars, that included the location of the stations around the planet and how the stations weren’t still in their assigned orbits. They weren’t far off, but they weren’t quite right. Maybe it was nothing to worry about - Jared wasn’t a math guy – and he could see why the governors wouldn’t want to scare people, but if it was nothing then why not explain that?

“Jared, look, you don’t know me and I don’t know you, but, you have to be able to see it, right? Our job is to notice things planet-side. You notice it too, don’t you, that the stations aren’t in as good a shape as they keep telling everyone?”

Jared let out a deep breath. “Yeah. I’ve noticed. I know a few others have too but no one is willing to talk about it. They believe the governors will see it fixed.”

“With what resources?”

Jared shook his head. “I’m not even sure they have the people who know how to fix it.”

“Food isn’t an issue for them. They know where the stashes are, if they ever need them.” Jensen took his own plate and sighed. “Sorry. Not exactly dinner conversation, is it?”

“Not the best, but the food is good,” Jared said. At least he wasn’t the only one that was rusty with his people skills. 

Jensen laughed at that and Jared found the sound of it endearing. He laughed whole-heartedly, throwing his head back and letting the sound roll around him. Jared couldn’t help but smile at it.

“Any chance of trading some MRE’s for a few meals?” he asked.

Jensen shook his head. “You don’t need to trade. One of the stashes is close by. I can give you the coordinates of a few if you’d like. I figure the station won’t look at them in our lifetime so who will catch us?”

Jared took another bite of the prepared meal and closed his eyes. Their own MREs were very basic. They used to make them better, obviously, but their manufacturing abilities on the stations were limited. Again, Jared wasn’t even sure they had the people alive anymore that could replicate the tech even if they wanted to.

“I might take you up on that.”

Jensen smiled as they continued to share the meal.

***

They traveled for two days in the canyon and Jared found himself enjoying the company more and more. He wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to stay with Jensen, but the other man was funny and smart. He was a bit cynical but he was self-deprecating and didn’t take himself too seriously. 

Every day Jared sent in his samples and his observations, and he waited.

Because Jensen wasn’t even taking samples.

He waited for Jensen to explain. Because Jared was beginning to come to a conclusion about the man and he didn’t like it. He didn’t want to ask though. He didn’t want to be the one to bring it up.

If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t want this to end.

It was their third mid-day together and Jared set his hammock up, ready to get some sleep. They’d climbed some steep rock faces that morning to get some samples Jared needed to reach. They’d already eaten and Jensen was cleaning up, while Jared just wanted to sleep. He wanted to rid himself of the thoughts that kept running around in his head.

He hopped into his bed and let out a deep breath as he listened to Jensen in the stream. It was soothing, to have someone else around. To hear him moving around the camp and the area. As far as Jared had found, none of the surface animals had survived so the only sound was usually just the wind across the sand and dirty plains or the eerie whistle through metal skeletons of once great cities.

Jared preferred being in the sandy plains, even if there wasn’t usually any shade. An oasis like this was something to be treasured. Soon enough, a storm would come to wreck it. They always did.

“Jared? You asleep yet?”

Jensen sounded wary and Jared carefully sat up to look at him. “No, just relaxing. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s all good. Sorta.”

“Sorta?” He swung his legs over the edge of the hammock and looked at Jensen.

“I can’t stay anymore. I don’t really want to move on, but I have to. I have something to take care of so tonight we’ll have to go our separate ways.”

Jared nodded. “I figured you’d have to return to work soon.”

“It’s not,” Jensen took a deep breath and let it out. “Jared, you know I’m not working as a surveyor.”

Jared nodded, unsure of what to say to that. 

“I’m an exile.”

It was Jared’s turn to take a deep breath. It was what he’d feared. There were very few reasons for exile. It was a death sentence. “What did you do?”

“I had a friend. She was an engineer. She … saw things on the station. Worse, she told people what she saw. We were labeled subversive and exiled.”

“What were you saying?”

“What I said the first night I met you. The idea of moving to the stars was a nice one, but the stations aren’t holding up the way they were meant too. We lost the ability to fix what is going to have to be fixed. The engineer agreed. She said the whole thing was slowly coming apart.”

“I didn’t hear about a trial,” Jared said.

“Not every subversive gets a trial. We were sent here without any hope of surviving.”

“But you did.”

“I did.” Jensen paused before he continued on, “She died.”

“I’m sorry,” Jared said softly.

“You don’t hate me?”

Jared shrugged because he knew he probably should but he couldn’t. He’d never been very good at spouting the lines they were supposed to. The words they spoke every mid-day to show fealty were stale in the metallic air and on the planet, they flowed away on the wind with no one to notice when he stopped speaking them.

“I don’t see why I should. You aren’t the only one who notices things. But how did y- the stashes you found. You didn’t just find a stash.”

“I reported the stashes. I didn’t report the shelter I’ve been living in.”

“Thank you for telling me. I wondered. I … I’ve been worried. And I would have worried if you’d just disappeared when I woke up.”

“Stay with me.”

“What?”

“Another storm is coming. This one is big, Jared. The equipment I have access too is sensitive. I was surveying weather patterns, not the soil and water contents. You won’t be able to come back for years.”

“That’s suicide, Jensen.”

“No, that station is. Will you … let me show you something? We can get there before they call you back.”

“To your shelter?”

Jensen nodded. “We can be there by tomorrow, mid-day if we leave when we wake tonight.”

Jared tried to think, but there was too much in his head. “I’ll answer tonight.”

Jensen didn’t look happy, but he seemed to understand that Jared wasn’t going to give him anything more during the day hours. “I’ll just … I’m gonna take care of camp then get some sleep,” Jensen said.

Jared nodded and sat back in his hammock. As much as he wanted to sleep, as tired as he’d been when he first sat on his hammock, sleep was no where to be had. Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to think his way through his instincts and his heart and the first real connection he’d ever had to another person.

***

“You’re doing the right thing.”

Jared had no doubt that Jensen believed it. Whatever Jensen wanted to show him though, it wasn’t just the shelter. They’d arrived, a massive door into a mountain, but Jensen had just pulled him into a stairwell and down they went. Level after level after level. None of the designations meant anything to Jared, but it was obvious Jensen knew just where he was going because he stopped and turned to face Jared.

“Jared, I wasn’t completely honest when I told you about my exile. I left out some things. Like, I didn’t tell you how long ago it was. Life expectancy when you’re exiled is maybe a month, if you can find shelter and no storms come suddenly. It is a death sentence and everyone on the station knows it. But I’ve been here for ten years.”

“What? How is that possible?”

“Do you remember what happened ten years ago?”

He didn’t even have to think. Everyone knew about it. The Free Will riots. A cult had taken over one of the stations and no one had known. They’d been breeding with no concern for population control and letting people chose their own vocation with no respect for what was needed. Jared had been 12 at the time and I’d been terrifying. People still spoke of it in whispers. 

“No. You wouldn’t have been old enough. They didn’t exile the children.”

Jensen laughed. “Didn’t they?”

“There was a public trial. The adults were exiled to separate locations. The children were taken off that station, separated, and given to other families.”

“They were separated from their parents. A single adult was exiled with the children, a pregnant woman who they couldn’t exile in the trials because of public opinion.”

“Jensen, that can’t be true.”

“Then explain this?”

He opened the stairwell door and Jared gasped in surprise. The room he was standing in was massive. He knew it was fake, but someone had recreated a beach in this massive facility. There was sand on one end and a large body of water. It looked so clear, Jared thought he might cry at the sight of it. He’d seen pictures of the ocean, Pre-storm. 

And, in the midst of the sand and the water, were people. Children. Teens. No one as old as Jared. 

The room went quiet as they were seen and Jensen raised a hand.

“Hey guys, this is my friend, Jared. I thought I’d show him around. See if … he might want to stay with us. So if you see him around, introduce yourselves, but be nice. He’s a surveyor. He’s not used to too many people at once.”

Jensen pulled Jared out of the room before he could say anything and none of the others reacted. While he was trying to process that, Jensen pulled him back up the stairs two floors and brought him into a long hallway. 

“Come on. They’ll come looking for you at the mess hall, but I figure you have a lot of questions first.”

He was led and all he could do was stare at the clean white walls and smell the air that wasn’t metallic like the station or filled with grit like the surface. 

Jensen stopped in front of a door and he smiled uncertainly at Jared before he opened the door. 

It was an apartment. Unlike the apartments on the station, there was room to move around. There were decorations on the walls and a bookcase that was filled with actual books and what looked like souvenirs of Jensen’s travels.

“Let me get you some clothes. Something clean so you can relax a little. You can shower, if you want, but I figured you’d rather ask questions.”

Jared nodded. “Thanks. Yeah. I … Jensen. What the hell?”

“I was 16 when it happened. The woman they sent with us, the engineer I told you about? Her name was Sam. She was pregnant when they sent her down here to die with us. My dad was a surveyor though and I’d been to ground with him. What they called the Free Will cult was just a group of people that wanted to leave the station and come back home. They wanted to find the old shelters. So, my dad did. He brought me down, told them all he was training me to do the job when I was old enough, and we hunted these old bunkers. I didn’t find this one until we’d been here about a year. There were a couple smaller ones but none were sustainable. If I’d found it earlier… maybe …” Jensen sighed. 

“What happened?”

“Sam died, in childbirth. It’s not like any of us knew what to do. We kept the baby and moved on. Eventually settled here.”

“How many?”

“There were 27 of us when we were exiled. Seven died over the years, accidents or illnesses we couldn’t care for. Three births. So 23. We’ve got a four-year-old and a three-year-old. And my girl, Sassy.”

“You have a daughter?”

“Sam’s girl. I raised her. She didn’t have anyone else.”

“This is … crazy. Jensen.”

“We can last out this next storm. These bunkers, they were made to withstand anything and they will. What they couldn’t withstand was the human population. They went to the stars because people couldn’t live underground in the masses. But we aren’t like that. We aren’t that many. There is space here for us to grow. And someday, those stations above us are going to fail and they are going to fall. And humanity will fall with it.”

Jared closed his eyes, because he believed it. He always had. He saw too much. He listened too well. He ignored it as best he could, because Jared could never give up hope, but the truth lingered in his heart like a weight some days.

Was this any better though?

“Get cleaned up,” Jensen said gently. “I’ll grab you some food and we can eat quietly. Maybe go out later and talk to the kids. You’ll see. They’re good people. I hate to see anyone else go back to the ships and die. Especially when they know that’s what they’re doing.”

***

And just like that, Jared was shown the shower and left alone.

The shower was amazing. More than the dribble of water given to them on the station, with temperatures that could range from ice cold to burning hot. Jensen had given him quick instructions in how to use the shampoo that had been stored here and the suds that covered his hair and body seemed luxurious. 

The towels were thick and soft, and Jared hadn’t ever worn clothes brand new out of a bag before. Jensen said there were stores of them in the bunker’s warehouse area. Fluffy socks. Clean clothes and skin scrubbed clean. Jared exited the bathroom and Jensen was waiting back in the front room.

He pulled Jared into a small kitchen that had a table with four chairs off to the side. 

“This is all yours?” Jared asked.

“Two bedrooms. Sassy lives with me, but she’s staying with a friend tonight. I wanted to give you plenty of time to ask questions.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you bring me here?”

Jensen sighed. “I wasn’t going to. I thought, maybe I’d keep an eye on you. Come find you if you came through here again. But we got the storm warning and I couldn’t wait. I guess… I’m lonely. I was the oldest when we landed and I sorta became dad to 25 kids. We took care of each other, it’s not like I was alone with babies or anything. Sassy was the only baby, but they were all between 8 and 3. They look at me differently. It was nice talking to someone who didn’t have that history.”

Jared shook his head. “Wow. That’s … yeah. I can see that.”

“I thought it was good,” Jensen started again. “That we could be friends, if we had the time. So, I guess I wanted the time. If you go back on the ship, I’ll still be here, when the storm blows over and they let you back down here. I’ll still be waiting to be your friend. But, I just thought maybe, if you saw this, you’d realize there was another option. That maybe, you’d want that option.”

Jensen got up and walked to a cabinet and pulled out a bowl. Jared knew his eyes were round as he looked at the fruit in the other man’s hand. “Is that an apple?”

Jensen handed him one. “We have a set of twins that love gardening. My Dad stored all the ebooks he could get ahold of that were for our return to Earth. He brought the copies and left them in a safebox with his speeder. When he was in the cities, he grabbed any real Earth books he could find. The twins took everything they could and learned to grow seeds in the facility here. There are still a lot of things we don’t know how to do, things that would make life easier here if we could understand, but we’re taking it a day at a time. Learn how to make things work that we have to and then make things better. Fresh fruits and vegetables have been a big relief though. The food packets were much better than the station food and MREs but nothing compares really.”

Jared stared at the red fruit in his hand and ran his fingers over the shiny skin. Jensen put the bowl away and Jared didn’t know what his face gave away, but Jensen laughed. 

“One tonight. Too much fresh food too quick will make you sick. We learned that much right away.”

Jared took a bite, surprised by the crunch of the flesh and the way the juice ran. He was almost as surprised by his own moan. He looked at Jensen and there was a fond smile on the other man’s face.

Jensen put two plates on the table and took a seat across from Jared. “Eat up. After dinner we’ll take a walk and you can see a little more.”

***

It was too much. Jared felt like his head would explode. He’d have been lost within a few feet of Jensen’s apartment without the other man to guide him. People came to introduce themselves and Jared tried to remember their names, their stories as they spoke, but everything slipped through his brain like his memory was a sieve. 

Although each apartment had a kitchen area, there was a large mess hall where the food was usually prepared and where they took meals together. 

They planned activities, like beach days at the lower deck pool and had reading groups that passed around old paper novels and discussed them. They watched old movies and ate something called popcorn that Jared had yet to try but had been told time and again he would love.

And as they moved around him, and touched his life for a moment, Jensen stayed, warm and calm at his side. He rolled his eyes when the older kids teasingly called him dad, and responded genuinely when the younger ones did. 

“Jared, are you okay?”

He looked at Jensen and realized that he’d closed his eyes and he was rubbing at his forehead. “I’m fine.”

Jensen looked at him, a frown on his face that Jared didn’t like for a moment. “Come on. It’s been a long day and its way past mid-day. Let’s get some sleep.”

Jared nodded and let Jensen lead him back to his apartment.

“You can stay with me tonight. There are other places, if you want, but I thought you’d rather be close to someone you knew.”

Jared nodded. “Yeah. I’d appreciate that.”

When they got back, a stack of clothes had been delivered to Jensen’s room and some new shoes. Jensen handed him new pajamas to sleep in and Jared ran to the bathroom before Jensen’s could see his reaction. 

It was stupid, getting choked up over something like having clean clothes out of the shower, and clean clothes again to sleep in. To knowing there was a stack of clean clothes and he didn’t have to wear his until the mud and grime was so thick they never really got clean again. 

There was something about a group of people that could spread out as far as they wanted, but who made time to play games together and plan outings, within their walls, to stay connected.

There was something about a boy who became a father when no one else was there to do it. Who traveled with children and found a way to make them safe and keep them safe. Who found a way to live out the dream his parents had for him and to share that with those less fortunate.

There was something about the way Jensen looked at him, that made him want to stay.

Jared had never been wanted.

He had been needed. Never wanted.

So, he changed and washed his face of tears, and went out to face Jensen again.

Jensen just smiled, like he’d expected Jared’s reaction. “The bed is big enough for two. Or I can sleep out here on the couch and you can have the bed.”

“I’ll stay.”

“No, you take the bed. I’ll take the-”

“I’ll stay,” Jared said again. “Here. With you. With them. I’ll stay out the storm with you.”

When Jensen smiled this time, it took Jared’s breath away. It was shy, almost tentative and when he searched Jared’s eyes, it gave Jared the courage to keep going.

“No one wants me there. They need my skills, but there’s always someone wanting to a chance to change. And with a storm coming, they’ll have plenty of time to train someone else up if they want to.”

“I want you here, Jared.”

Jared nodded. It was all he could do. Jensen slowly closed the distance between them and cupped Jared’s face with his hand. Jared leaned slightly into the touch and then Jensen’s lips were on his. It was a quick kiss, chaste and almost innocent, except for the way Jensen’s other hand settled on Jared’s hip and pulled him closer.

“You’ll stay with me?” Jensen asked quietly into the space between them. 

Jared let out a deep breath and smiled at the pure possibilities of the future that he had never thought he could have.

“Until the end.”


End file.
